If you were careful you could remove it completely, but... Who: Neena, Kitty, and Rachel What: Frying Neena's Brain, pretty much. When: Yesterday. Where: Neena's Place. Rating/Warnings: PG-13, Mild Triggers for Medical Stuff. Status: Complete!
“This is a bad idea.” Kitty folded her arms and stared at Neena from her perch on the older woman’s couch. “I can’t believe you talked me into this. Are you sure? What if I cause some kind of neurological disorder?”
"I figure that's what your amazing girlfriend, the Phoenix, is here for." Neena waved a hand at Rachel, who was sitting on the other side of her couch. She was too restless to sit, and was pacing back and forth in front of the coffee table.
Rachel held both of her hands up, "Hey, we don't actually know if my chrono skimming will work like that. You really shouldn't be relying on that to fix things in case they go horribly wrong."
“It’s not a bad idea, though,” Kitty admitted. “It might give us a do over card if things go bad. But this is still a bad idea all around. I mean I could try to remove it but I don’t know if that would be worse or not. I’m smart, but I’m not brain doctor smart.”
"You don't need to be brain doctor smart." Neena stopped pacing and leaned down to tap on a big file folder on her coffee table, "These are x-rays and MRI scans and cat scans and... if there's a scan of what's going on, they scanned it. You can take a look at what you're dealing with and Rach can guide your hand, I figure."
The folder lifted in the air, and the scans started to lift out of it in single file. Rachel sorted through them as she pulled them out telekinetically, "Why don't we just get some coffee and look through these before we do anything stupid crazy."
“All right. I’d like to know more before we try anything. Even if I just short it out, that could kill you.” Kitty reached for one to get a good look at it. “But right now that seems like the best bet.”
The scans showed the problem very clearly: a device that had been attached to the bones at the base of Neena's neck, with tiny wires growing out of it. Most of them had insinuated themselves down her spinal chord, and the whole thing looked nasty to deal with. Some seemed to be forging their way into the base of her brain stem.
Neena'd seen the scans enough and didn't really need to see them again. They terrified her like few things could and just brought back horrible memories from her dream life. So she elected herself to go get the coffee.
Rachel held the x-rays up to a nearby lamp, in the meantime, and wrinkled her nose, "I don't even know. This is crazy. I mean, I can use the scans to guide your hand but I think you're just going to have to phase through her at this rate."
“God…” Kitty looked through each one. It looked more and more bad the more she looked at it and the more she realized just how insidious this thing was. “If I just phase it out I’ll probably kill her. I’d have to do every single thread, one by one. Then I couldn’t stop. Once I started I couldn’t stop until it’s all out or risk fusing it to her.”
"Which... is a lot of work. Can you even keep that up for that long?" Rachel glanced at Kitty and frowned, "I'd help any way I could, of course. If you were careful you could remove it completely, but..."
"But if she slips at all I'm face first on the carpet twitching, right?" Neena interrupted, with a bit of a snort. She handed mugs to Kitty and Rachel, then clenched onto her own tightly.
“I’ve been phased for longer,” Kitty admitted. “When I was stuck in that bullet.” There was a risk she wouldn’t be able to unphase if she was doing it that long. “On the plus side, this is much smaller and I wouldn’t have to phase my whole body, either. So yeah, there’s a risk this could make you catatonic, or worse.”
"Well, that sounds like fun," Neena replied. She took a fortifying sip of coffee, and wished that she could have put some alcohol in it. But with Kitty tinkering around in her head, she figured adding liquor was a bad idea.
"What are the risks if we just leave it alone? Why are you so adamant about shutting it off or removing it anyway?" Rachel asked. She still wasn't sure this was a good idea. And not just because of the risks to Neena. Kitty stood to risk a lot, too.
"The wires or nanofilaments or whatever the hell they're called are problematic, for one thing. It's created a few more since it showed up in there. But the major thing is that it's fucking my powers up. Every time they activate I get this migraine-inducing buzzing in my head. Sometimes it shows up when a radio frequency is wrong, too, or just for fun. They can't remove it with surgery or it'll paralyze me, but to be honest... I can't do my job with that thing active. I've tried. I was in a firefight last week and everything was killing me. Sure, I hit things and we survived it but I ended up with a bullet graze and I don't need to die anytime soon here." Neena thought being stuck in a catatonic state was worse, of course, but there was a chance it would all work out.
“You just get into random firefights at the drop of a hat, don’t you.” Kitty took a closer look at the main chip itself. Well, it was too large to call a chip. An implant. “I think it uses your body heat to power itself. So it’s not just going to run out of juice. But if I phase into the right place I might be able to fry that part. It’ll be disabled, but still in you. I just dunno what the feedback would be like.”
"It's how we handled it in the dream world. Jesse had this power that manipulated EM fields and shut down electrical equipment. Mind you, he did it without me asking and it shorted my brain out, which wasn't fun. But as far as I'm aware, it's never turned itself back on since then." Neena spun her coffee cup in her hands a bit, and sighed, "I'd rather it was gone. But that's a lot of pressure on you. Either way we do this it's not going to be pleasant for me. But I can't live like this. I figure you both respect that."
Rachel nodded, "Well I can probably telekinetically zap you awake if we're worried about that. It's not a lasting solution if we end up killing you but it kind of works like CPR or those zap paddles they use in hospitals."
Kitty chewed on the inside of her cheek. This, really, was kind of her first real decision as the self-proclaimed ‘leader’ of the X-men, and she wasn’t about to ask Logan or Scott to tell her what to do. Neena wanted this, and worse it impacted her ability. If they could at least disable it they could have time to research how to remove it. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll short it out, then we’re going to ask the people with the tech and the brains to see if they might have some ideas on how to remove it safely and permanently. Or see if they’ll lend us some equipment so I can watch what I’m doing while I remove it.”
"That seems like a better idea than winging it. I can guide you telepathically but it sure as hell isn't the same thing as good equipment." Rachel had an idea of how she'd do it - projecting a mental picture based on the scans. But it wasn't the same as some kind of internal camera.
"Getting it done might involve cutting you open. It's probably one of the only ways she'll see what she's doing as she does it. That'll take you out of the game for a while, so you might want to think about that."
Neena nodded her head. She wasn't about to force Kitty into doing anything she wasn't comfortable with, and to be honest she herself wasn't that comfortable with the idea either. She wasn't comfortable with the idea of being cut open, either, but the damn thing had to go.
She set her coffee mug down on the table, and cracked her knuckles. "Alright, Kid. Get in there. Let's do this."
"Wait." Rachel hopped up and ran to the bathroom, then came back with a toothbrush, "You're going to want to bite on this so you don't cut your tongue."
"So glad I make enough money to throw that out when we're done with this and buy a new one," Neena quipped. Then she set the plastic handle of it in her mouth and gave Kitty a determined thumbs up.
Kitty looked at the blueprint again, then nodded her head. “Ray, hold her in place.” She settled in behind Neena, and rubbed her finger at the base of her skull. She could even feel it when she pressed hard enough. “Well, this part will be easy. If you’re ready, let Ray know.”
"Alright. This might tingle a bit." Rachel held her hands out and cocooned Neena in telekinetic energy, then locked it into place so that she couldn't move. You ready for this? It's probably going to sting.
Stinging is an understatement. Last time this happened I could taste batteries on my breath for a week. Tell her I'm good to go. Neena's mental voice sounded even more determined than her physical voice had, previously.
"Well, she says she's good. It's all up to you now, Kate. No pressure or anything."
“Well. Here goes.” And Kitty pushed her finger into the alien chip, phasing in the way that would disrupt electronics the most. What she hadn’t told Neena was it could possibly knock her out.
It was definitely going to knock her out. Her body shook a bit as the chip shorted itself out, sending a shock of electricity down her spine. Even though Neena'd braced herself for it and had bit down on the toothbrush as hard as she could, a scream still escaped her throat.
If Rachel hadn't been holding her in place telekinetically, she definitely would have toppled over. But there was that familiar battery taste, and a second after that, everything went black.
Rachel gently moved her into a more comfortable laying position when it was over, "I'm still picking up vital signs, so you definitely didn't kill her?"
“Ohthankgod.” Kitty leaned back and tugged at her hair. She looked worriedly at Neena. “That wasn’t very fun. Less so for her.”
"I know. But you did good. I don't think she would have asked you to do that if she didn't have faith, you know? She's way too careful with that kind of thing." Which Rachel thought was funny, considering how reckless Neena was with everything else.
She got up and wrapped an arm around Kitty, "Breathe. Drink your coffee. She's probably going to be out for a bit but knowing you, you'll want to stick around to make sure she wakes up without brain damage. So lets have some fun and re-arrange everything by about a quarter of an inch while she's out."
Rachel smirked at Kitty, "It'll drive her nuts."
“Neena is a strange woman,” Kitty admitted, taking the coffee and sucking it down like it was water. She eyed her girlfriend, a grin forming on her lips. “An eighth of an inch, it’ll drive her crazier longer because it’ll be less obvious.”